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The Catholic and the Puritan Settler of 
Maryland. 

AN ADDF(E)$$ 



Delivered on Invitation of the Maryland Legislature, in 

the Hall of the House of Delegates, March 5, 

I894, at the Celebration of the 

Bi=Centennial of the 



REMOVAL OF THE STATE CAPITAL 



St. Mary's to Annapolis, 



By ALFRED PEARCE DENNIS, A. M. 

Instructor In History, Princeton College. 







BALTIMORE : 
Printed by King Brothers. 
1894. 



The Catholic and the Puritan Settler of 
Maryland. 

AN ADDF^E)^$ 



Delivered on Invitation of the Maryland Legislature, in^ 

the Hall of the House of Delegates, March 5, 

1 894, at the Celebration of the 

Bi^Centennial of the 



REMOVAL OF THE STATE CAPITAL 



St. Mary's to Annapolis, 



By ALFRED PEARCE DENNIS, A. M. 

Instructor lu History, Princeton Collei^re. 




BALTIMORE: 
Printed by King Brothers. 
1894. 






GIFT 

BBS. WOODROW ^N^tSOH 

MOV. 23, 1939 



Ladies and Gentlemen : 

It is most appropriate that the people of this imme- 
diate vicinity should publicly celebrate a day that chose 
this city above the fairest of her sisters, and exalted her 
to political headship. It is iitting that men selected for 
the honorable discharge of public duties should pause in 
the business of State to observe a day that rehearses the 
story of the first English colony governed by laws 
enacted in a provincial assembly. It is becoming that 
the citizens of a great commonwealth should commemo- 
rate an act which had its genesis in the resistance of a 
liberty-loving people to the paramount authority of an 
hereditary sovereign. Surrounded to-day by the pro- 
gressive spirit of the western world, with its exhaustless 
material resources, its matchless achievements of thouo-ht, 
the appeal is made to the past, with all it has given, with 
all it gives, as a pledge and inspiration for the future. 
If the records unearthed and deciphered by the Geolo- 
gist have forced us to add countless ages to the life of 
mankind, they have robbed us of a fair proportion of 



boasted antiquity. And yet our wholesome conscious- 
ness of the forces that gather by duration and persis- 
tence, loses nothing of its potency because our citizen- 
ship is cast in a land which antiquity rightly styles the 
"New World." Better a generation of political life, 
where an awakenin<^ human conscience has thrown off 
the fetters of nature and broken the bonds of the despot, 
than forty centuries of an organized society that schools 
man in the one lesson that status has placed him irre- 
deemably under the will of an inexorable master. Pop- 
ular assemblies met in the Province of the Calverts 
before the independence of any existing Republic of the 
Old World had been acknowledged. Democratic insti- 
tutions put forth their flower on the banks of the Chesa- 
peake, when the weeds of a feudal absolutism still grew 
rank on European soil. Laws were old upon our statute 
books when the vast country bevond the Alleghanies 
was as little known, and thought as little worth knowing, 
as the heart of Africa. These laws had run a century's 
course when native and alien hosts joined in vain strug- 
gle to plant on American soil the lilies of France. As 
two centuries look down upon us to day, from popular 
institutions planted on these shores, I point you not to a 
past that is dead, but to a past that lives. Our past is a 
record of life, life that has subdued the rough forces of 
nature; life that has braved a thousand perils and survived 



a thousand hardships ; life that has persisted unquenchable 
tlirough endless cycles of change, and survives abun- 
dantly to-day in the fuller development of a robust 
statehood. Royalty's fiction, that the King never dies, 
carries with it more than a half-truth. Generations pass 
away, society lives on. Human society is an organism, 
it grows from within, its roots lie deep in the past. It is 
not a contradiction to say that the individual may have 
an independent life, and at once be an expression of the 
general spirit of society. 

A thousand vain experiments in political mechanics 
have shown that constitutions are not manufactured, but 
grow. A thousand dismal failures have shown that no 
political alchemy can transform the baser into the nobler 
metals to perform the function of money. A thousand 
wretched blunders have shown that legislative bodies 
cannot make that law which does not reflect the common 
consciousness of society. Our statute books are choked 
today with laws which have not kept pace with the life 
of the community, and are as dead as the hands that 
penned them, or with laws that have so far run ahead of 
the common habit that they are as idle as the cries of the 
heathen prophets of Baal. The "bare ruin'd choirs" of 
even a Shakespeare's life remind us that the individual 
existence is at best a short career, whose history from 



preface to conclusion is largely a record of ideals missed. 
Hope for humanity cannot be founded upon what any 
individual can accomplish as a disconnected unit. Like 
the coral reef that springs impeiishable from ocean's 
depths, a monument to the countless toilers that gave 
their little lives in its construction, the organism which 
we call the state, has developed by successive increments 
through a hundred generations. The fleeting life of the 
unit has been built into the undying life of the aggre- 
gate. I purpose to-night to point out certain construc- 
tive elements built into the fabric of this commonwealth 
during the early and formati.ve period of our colonial 
history. 

The early colonizers of Maryland, though sprung from 
a common stock, were not a Iiomogeneous people in their 
sympathies and antipathies. Maryland soil had been 
occupied by three distinct classes of settlers before the 
middle of the seventeenth century. Clayborne was first 
in the field with his Protestant settlement on Kent island. 
Profit, and not piety, was the greatest object in life for 
Clayborne. Pre emption, and not redemption, gave pith 
and purpose to his enterprise. Between these Ohurch- 
of-England men, backed in tlieir possession by fair legal 
claims, and the later Catholic settlers in St. Mary's, there 
was no more CQinmunity of interest than is indicated in 



their armed conflict on the waters of the Chesapeake. 
Aside from the sporadic attempts of Clayborne to vindi- 
cate his property rights by arms, he and his band have 
no large formative influence in our early state life. 

Nor was there more community of interest between 
the planters on the Potomac and the Puritan band that 
settled fifteen years later on the banks of the Severn. 
Five years had not run their course before Old World 
animosities had burst into a flame and plunged "Papist'^ 
and "Precisian" into the flercer struggle of an appeal to 
arms. Distrust, prejudice, antipathy, doubly sealed the 
commission of every actor in this struggle, yet each party 
represented principles complemental and significant in 
the splendid development of civil and religious liberty 
in the Maryland Province. The Roman Catholic was 
tolerant in religion, but narrow in politics. The Puritan 
was narrow in religion, but in politics liberal. While 
historians have delighted to retouch the glowing picture of 
the religious toleration of the Roman Catholic colonists, 
the wholesome influence of these Puritan settlers in mould- 
ing the early political life of the Province has been largely 
ignored. They have been scouted as troublers of a well- 
ordered system— as Adullamites drawing into sympathy 
with themselves the disaffected, the chagrined, the Ishmael 
brood that takes to the wilderness in explosive self-asser- 



8 



tion rather than endure identification with a regime as 
distasteful to thetn as was ever the party and partisans of 
Luther to Pascal, Fenelon and the brilliant company of 
Port Royal. It has been pointed out that these Catho- 
lics of St. Mar3''s were expatriated, harried out of their 
•native land by a pioud Anglican hierarchy and a parlia- 
ment of Puritan temper. Assuredly upon the heads of 
the Protestants lies the l)ase sin of ingratitude. Their 
•example in religious matters becomes one of exclusive- 
ness, narrowness and ban. Catholics were disfranchised 
in the colony they had planted. Nor did the movement 
«top until the seat of government had been transferred 
from Catholic St. Mary's to the spot on which we stand. 

The more lurid tints of the foregoing picture fade in 
the light of closer investigation. A host of authorities 
■contend that Maryland was intended as an asylum for 
Roman Catholics, who found upon the banks of the 
Potomac the Puritan Plymouth. This is the generally 
accepted view, yet this portion of our history remains to 
be rewritten. The Puritan settlers in Maryland, and noi 
the Catholics, were religious refugees. When George 
Calvert projected his scheme of a Proprietary, C(»lony 
across the sea, the Catholics — we use the term through- 
out in its popular meaning — in high good 'favor at Court, 
enjoyed a fuller indulgence than they had known for 



9 



more than half a century. (Granting for a moment that 
an asylum was needed, how exphiin the purpose of 
Calvert's Avalon Colony in Newfoundland, undertaken 
before his Catholic faith was considered worth the 
avowal ? If refugees — how account for Calvert's attempt 
to settle in A'irginia, where he would have encountered 
the church establishment from which he is supposed to 
have Hed? If refugees — how account for a very con- 
siderable number of Protestants in the first expedition to 
Maryland ? The theory can not stand. The purpose in 
the founding of the Maryland Colony by the Calverts 
was mainly economic, and not religious. 

Any theory that may be accepted in explanation of 
Calvert's purpose in the colonization of Maryland leads 
by a natural regress of canses to England under the first 
of the Stuarts. 

The dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII left 
the Church stricken and helpless. From this point may 
be dated the downfall of the Catholic hierarchy in 
England. The anti-Catholic party no longer represented 
the timid opposition of a few malcontents, but, fed by 
material interest and protected by royal authority, grew 
into the great party of the Reformation in England. 
Henry was in no wise a conscious reformer. His regard 
for the Pope declined as his affection for Anne Boleyn 



10 



increased. IIow he could have rejected papal authority^ 
and at the same time have sought to maintain Catholic 
doctrine, is a mysterj' of religious purpose which bailies 
all attempts at successful analysis. The common-place 
law of self-interest solves the seeming paradox. Strange 
contrasts are found in the dealings of Tudor Eojalty 
with the problems of the Reformation. Henry VIII 
and his progeny in turn cared nothing for toleration as a 
principle. Mary and Edward were fully convinced of 
their commission to do God's service. But Mary would 
have swept away the work of Edward had not her 
tierce zeal undermined the cause for which she would 
willingly have died. Tliey differed as widely in their 
attitude to dissent as they differed in creed. Both were 
intolerant. Bnt Mary was a persecutor. 

Like the founder of her family, Elizabeth took up. au 
independent political position betweeTi the two great 
powers, Erance and Spain. Like her father, she mas- 
queraded in a garb of independence between tiie two 
great religions. She did not concern herself with dogma 
for its own sake. Slie never allowed her mental vision 
to fix itself upon the small points of doctrine, to the 
neglect of a broad general policy. Of the political 
unity which from the dawn of the Reformation was 
destined to supersede ecclesiastical unity among the 



11 



(Tcrmatiic speaking peoples, she c(»uld know or cared 
nothing. She turned from the Pope to iier people for a 
vindication of her claims to legitiniacy. The struggle 
between the Crown and the Puritans scarcely widened 
beyond the Held of wordy ecclesiastical controversy. 
Puritanism was not yet a fighting force in England. 

On the other hand, Elizabeth's strife with the Catholics 
represented a grave political exigency in which the per- 
petuity of her government, no less than Protestant estab- 
lishment, was at stake. Justification of her deeds of 
blood, done under the impulse of political expediency, is 
a task which has never been accomplished by the most 
fulsome of Elizabeth's panegyrists. Three generations 
separated the Queen from the days of the undivided 
church. She was less hampered by tradition ; she was 
called upon to make no violent break witli the past. She 
looked upon Catholic intrigues as a challenge to royal 
authority, and met them with a policy of coercion which 
increased in severity until the day of her death. 

Under James, the first of the Stuarts, the old policy of 
religious coercion was continued, but with the important 
distinction that Catholic and Puritan exchanged positions 
as objects of royal hostility. The political considerations 
which had armed Elizabeth against the Catholics, turned 
James and his successor with equal consistency against 



12 



the Puritans. Precisely the causes which brought a 
relaxation of tiie penal laws against Catholics, induced 
increased severity toward the Puritans. The character- 
istic prejudice of the Puritan was his bigoted abhorrence 
of popery and prelacy. James' devotion to an erastian 
church is sunimod up in his favorite maxim — "No 
Bishop, no King." The struggle to preserve his 
autonomy took form in a contest with the Presbyterian 
clergy of Scotland before he came to the English throne. 
Melville, second only to Knox as a figure in Scottish 
■ecclesiastical history, had assumed the leadership in a 
contest with the civil power, which culminated sixty years 
later in open rebellion against Charles I. Nor did the 
movement, essentially democratic, stay until it demanded 
the life of the King. Melville's doctrine of equality in 
things spiritual, imported from Geneva, and reared on the 
speculative basis that all laborers in Christ are equal, had 
been metamorphosed into the dogma of political equality. 
Political harangues from Scotch pulpits became the 
order of the day, James furnishing the mark for Pres- 
byterian diatribes. The atrabilious humor of the Scotch 
clergy found expression in studied insults to the 
King. When Melville, plucking James by the sleeve, 
addressed him as " God's sillie vassall," he conveyed a 
volume of unwholesome truth to a sovereign transported 



13 



with self-conceit and feverishly jealous of autliority. 
James has recorded his experience at tliis period in his 
reply to Dr. Reynolds, at the Hampton Court conference : 
"If you aim," said he, "at a Scottish Preshytery, it 
agreeth as well with monarchy as God with the devil. 
Then Jack and Tom and Will and Dick shall meet and 
censure me and my council." 

The democratic drift of Melville and his co-religionist& 
had its genesis at Geneva — it was nourished in Scotland — 
extended across the border — spanned the ocean, and is 
read anew in the strife of the settlers on this spot for 
political equality. As the strength of the Puritan fac- 
tion in England increased, the apparently irreconcilable 
parties of the opposition were drawn together for com- 
mon defence. Long before Puritanism had gained 
absolute control in the overthrow and execution of 
Charles, the forces of the Court, the Established Church, 
the Catholics and the Arminians had practically joined 
hands against the common enemy. The hatred James 
bore to the Puritans, and his natural clemency to the 
Catholics, were further emphasized as early as 161G, when 
the King began negotiations for the " Spanish match." 
For seven years these negotiations for the marriage of 
Prince Charles to the Spanish Infanta dragged on through 
the tedious mazes of royal protocols and papal dispensa- 
tions. 



14 



It was precisely within these years, when the penal 
laws against Catholics had been suspended, when scores 
of popish lords and knights were in the enjoyment of 
high public trusts, and the royal purpose pointed to a 
wider indulgence than had been known for half a 
century, that C-reorge Calvert projected his plan of 
western empire. As early as 1620, he had obtained title 
in Newfoundland for the purpose of "drawing back 
yearly some benefits therefrom." jSTot a scintilla of 
evidence goes to show that Calvert obtained this grant as 
an asylum for persecuted Catholics. Indeed, a consider- 
able number of historians insist that Calvert was a 
Protestant when the grant was obtained. This plan of 
founding a Proprietary Colony for purposes of revenue 
only reached its development more than a decade later, 
when the charter of Maryland was penned. There was 
no break in policy or purpose. The Avalon venture 
proved a bad investment. When Calvert visited his 
Avalon plantation in 1627, he found the glowing pictures 
of its natural advantages highly overdrawn. The soil, 
alternately stiffened by frost and shadowed by fogs, 
banished all dreams of commercial success from this 
quarter. He writes a pitiful letter to King Charles, ask- 
ing for a grant in Virginia, with such privileges as King 
James had been pleased to grant him. These privileges 



15 



were granted in a charter modeled upon the Avalon 
patent. In their salient features the provisions of the 
two documents are identical. If it can not be insisted 
with reason that the Avalon colony was planted as a 
retreat for English Catholics, no more can the common 
opinion be justified that the Maryland grant was obtained 
with like design, unless it can be shown that a change of 
policy came with Calvert's supposed change of faith. 

A host of authorities aver that George Calvert became 
a convert to the Catholic faith about the year 1624, after 
the planning of his Avalon Colony. This generally 
accepted theory rests in the last resort upon the testimony 
of two contemporary authorities — Fuller and Goodman. 
Thomas Fuller, Prebendary of Sarum, stamps on every 
page his violent anti-( 'atholic bias. The retirement 
of Calvert from the high office of Secretary of State, 
took place on the failure of the Spanish match in 1624. 
In this same year fifty-four eminent Catholics were dis- 
lodged from public office by an ultra-Protestant 
Parliament. The creed of every high officer of State 
was scrutinized as never before. Things suddenly 
recognized are often mistaken as things that have 
suddenly come into existence. Fuller's mistake in 
attributing Calvert's retirement from oflice to a supposed 
conversion to Catholicism was a natural one. The testi- 



16 



mony of Dr. Thomas Goodman, Bishop of Gloucester, 
to the same effect bears internal evidence of inaccuracy. 
He avers that Calvert was converted by Gondomar, the 
Spanish Ambassador and the Earl of Arundel, whose 
daughter Calvert's son had married. When Gondomar 
was in England, Ann Arundel was a mere child, and 
could not have been married to Secretary Calvert's son. 
Furthermore, Arundel was not the man to make a 
successful missionary. It is not so much an open ques- 
tion as to whether he lield this creed or that, but as to 
whether he thought it of sufficient importance to hold 
any creed at all. 

In opposition to the commonly accepted theory of Cal- 
vert's conversion, may be set the testimony of reliable 
historians : Arthur Wilson plainly states that Calvert 
was a Catliolic when first made Secretary of State in 
1619. This was at least a year before his private scheme 
of western empire was mooted. Twice in connection 
with events wliich could not have occurred later than 
1621, Calvert is classed with the adherents of the Church 
of Eome. Rapin, in his invaluable history, accepts the 
same view. Oldmixon speaks of Calvert as a popish 
secretary, in connection with an event which could not 
have transpired later than October, 1621, and in another 
work states, authoritatively, that Sir George Calvert was 



17 



of the Romish religion when he obtained the grant in 
Newfoundhind. Independent of direct testimony, the 
theory of Calvert's late conversion is untenable. King 
James bore no especial ill-will to life-long Catholics, but 
was intensely hostile to such as changed from the new 
faith to the old. Read the King's bitter tirades against 
such, and then consider his life-long regard for Calvert. 
On the death of James, his son Charles desired to con- 
tinue Calvert, who had now been raised to the peerage, a 
member of the Privy Council — offering at the same time 
to dispense with the oath of supremacy. Furthermore, 
the sudden conversion of Calvert introduces the dilemma 
of explaining the Catholic faith of all his progeny of 
whom we have any knowledge. Can it be assumed that 
they were trained as Protestants, and as suddenly as their 
father, abandoned the faith in which they had been 
reared ? 

It is reasonably certain that George Calvert was an 
adherent of the Church of Rome when advanced to the 
secretaryship. The whole fabric of his tardy conversion 
to Catholicism, and retirement from office in consequence, 
must fall to the ground. The public acknowledgment of 
his fidelity to the mother church is generally accepted as 
the cause of his withdrawal from power. It was simply 
a mask to cover his defeat by Buckingham. The diver- 
gent aims of the two in the Spanish match, and the ulti- 



18 



mate triumph of Buckingham in his program of 
opposition, furnish conclusive evidence that Calvert's 
(political career received its death-blow on the termination 
■of friendly negotiations with the Spanish Court. Cal- 
vert had everything to gain in securing the marriage of 
Prince Charles to the Infanta. Sensitive in the highest 
degree to the Ixeatli of royal favor, he would naturally 
have bent every energy to accomplish the union upon 
which Kino; James had set his heart. Aside from sub- 
servience to the wishes of the King, Calvert acted the 
iraore zealously in the matter, because of the wider indul- 
gence in religion which the marriage would confer. For 
years, a warm support of the Spanish match was a pass- 
port to royal favor. The opposition of l!^anton, the 
Protestant colleague of Calvert in the secretaryship, 
brought his downfall at an early stnge of the proceedings. 
In the reaction which followed the utter defeat of the 
Spanish policy, Calvert himself was swept from power. 

The Earl of Bristol was in full control of the negoti- 
ations with the Court at Madrid. But Calvert was the 
only Secretary employed in the Spanish match. The 
vigilance and penetration of Bristol were such that the 
most secret councils of the Spanisli Court did not escape 
him. The King was more than satisfied ; the accom- 
plished Infanta was soon to arrive in England with a 
magnificent dowry, and assurance was given that the 



19 



marriage would be the certain precursor of the restitu- 
tion of the Palatinate. At this happy juncture Buck- 
ingham appears upon the scene. Among all the strong 
band of uncrowned heads, that his generation could mar- 
shal no man was more potential than he. His sway was 
more unlimited than had been that of Gaveston at the 
council board of the Plantagenet King, or of Essex at 
the Court of the Tudor Queen. His was the potency of 
a Sejanus, the unrivaled control of a Madam Pompa- 
dour. As is often the case with the low-born advanced 
to high station, Buckingham was proud, insolent, and 
excessively jealous of authority. Bristol's success in the 
negotiation with Spain was at once a challenge. A rival 
may be eclipsed by a greater light blazing in the same 
field, or crushed by direct personal attack. Buckingham 
determined to meet Bristol at Madrid, out-dazzle him in 
the eyes of the Spanish, out bid him in the despatch of 
the royal commission. But not only did the favorite 
discover that the mine of popularity liad been worked to 
its utmost capacity, but even found himself the peculiar 
object of the Spaniards' aversion. He changed his tac- 
tics. Burst into an open quarrel with Bristol over the 
jidiculous matter of precedence in a royal pleasure party. 
For weeks he employed his fruitless artifices to break 
the match which Bristol had negotiated, and finally suc- 
ceeded by a preposterous demand that would have 



20 



affronted any sovereign in Europe. An open rupture 
was inevitable. Wedding jewels were returned, and 
active preparations made for war. The Infanta tearfully 
resigned her short-lived title of Princess of Wales, and 
abandoned the study of the English language. 

Buckingham returned to England the idol of the anti 
Catholic party. In the day of his power his triumph 
was not complete while yet a Mordecai sat at the King's 
gate. Upon Middlesex, Bristol and Calvert, the trio of 
the opposition, the heavy hand of the low-born Favorite 
fell witli blighting effect. Middlesex, who had "gained 
much credit with the King," during the Spanish negoti- 
ations, was stripped of public honors and thrust from 
his seat in the House of Lords. Bristol was flung into 
prison the day he set foot on native soil, and upon re- 
lease, retired to private life. Both these men recognized 
the hand that smote them, as is abundantly shown by the 
records. The fate of Calvert, who, as late as January 
14th, 1624:, openly opposed in council a breach with 
Spain, could have been read in the fall of Middlesex and 
Bristol. "Mr. Secretary Calvert, writes a contemporary, 
hath never looked merrily since the Prince his coming 
out of Spain ; it was thought he was much interested in ^ 
the Spanish affairs ; a course was taken to rid him of all 
employments and negotiations." " Secretary Calvert, 
says a letter written August, 1021-, droops and keeps out 



21 

of the way." Though driven from power by Bucking- 
ham, Calvert continued to enjoy the regard of King 
James and his son. He was created Baron of Balti- 
more, permitted to sell his Secretaryship, and left 
free to pursue those plans, on which his mind had been 
set for years, of empire beyond the sea. A decade of 
costly experiment closed with the grant of Maryland. 
A grant, the "most ample and sovereign in its character 
that ever emanated from the English Crown." 

George Calvert's son Cecilius, " heir to his father's in- 
tentions not less than to his father's fortunes," sent over 
his first colonists to Maryland in 163i. More than half 
of the members of the first expedition were Protestants. 
Out of two hundred and twenty, one hundred and 
twenty-eight on sailing refused the test oaths. Father 
More writes to Rome that " by far the greater part of 
the colony were heretics." Father White writes from 
the colony of St. Mary's, that of twelve who died from 
illness on the voyage, but two were Catholics. The 
Father Provincial laments in a letter to Pome that 
" three parts of the people, or four, at least, are heretics." 
Twenty years after the landing at St. Mary's, Hammond 
wrote that there were " but few papists in Maryland." 
While the first colony was numerically Protestant, Chan- 
cellor Kent is correct when he speaks of the colony as 
" the Catholic planters of Maryland," and Judge Story, 



22 



when he says they " were chiefly Roman Catholics," and 
Bancroft, when he writes that the religious toleration of 
the early period of settlement was the work of Catholics. 
The physical balance of power was with the Protestants ; 
the social, political and intellectual control was with the 
Catholics. Court .-ecords, council proceedings, the 
names given to towns, to Hundreds, to creeks, to manors, 
all offer testimony to Catholic control. 

In bold relief above the portals of an arch at the 
Columbian Exposition is traced the inscription : " Tolera- 
tion in Religion — the Best Fruit of the Last Four 
Centuries." The impartial verdict of history must con- 
cede to Calvert's (Catholic colony the proud distinction of 
being the lirst, and, for a generation, the sole champion 
of religious freedom on the Western Hemisphere. 

Controversy has centered about the famous Toleration 
Act of 1649. Protestants, as well as Catholics, have 
claimed the honor of its passage. The early religious 
freedom of which we boast had neither genesis nor sup- 
ports in legislative enactments. Religious toleration 
prevailed as a habit of the settlers of St. Mary's, forceful 
and wholesome, as an inchoate law years before the 
hybrid statute of 1649 was submitted to vote. Un- 
friendly critics have further urged that this Catholic 
toleration had its genesis in political necessity, and was 
nurtured by a broad policy of far-sighted self-interest. 



23 



We reject the nnwortliy imputation that the colonists of 
St. Mary's knew no higher sanction for their tolerance 
than the restrictions of a charter or the dictates of the 
common-place law of self-interest. The course of history 
prior to the seventeenth century has been sufKcient to 
show the irrelation between low ideals of conduct 
and religious persecution. Toleration was the child of 
force, not of philosophic calm. The mediaeval mind 
shaped action in countless instances to mean and un- 
worthy ends, the medijpval heart sanctioned enormities of 
conduct which deeply tincture the annals of Europe with 
shameful and bloody revivals of lawlessness. Cruel and 
unusual punishments for wrong acts, as well as heretical 
opinions, are passing away. Sheep-stealing was punish- 
able by death under the old . English law. Wrong views 
of transubstantiatiun were met by the argument of the 
gibbet. 

While all the homilies of two centuries have not suf- 
ficed to bring out a new moral truth, it must be borne in 
mind that moral standards are continuallv chansrino'. 
We must look into the spirit of bygd^ne times in order 
to appreciate the true worth and meaning of the great 
principle upheld by these settlers of St. Mary's. They 
had to suffer much, to surrender much, to obey, in the 
land of their nativity; with true nobility thej^ welcome 
their former oppressors to their new found lands beyond 



24 



the sea; with true nobility they pledge their officers not 
to molest any "person professing to believe in Jesus Christ 
for or in respect of religion." Whatever the motive, the 
•world had not in that daj'^ seen the like. 

As early as 1631, the government of the Virginia Colony 
became openly intolerant. Under the hand of Berkeley, 
the bigoted Church of-England Governor, distress the 
most adverse fell upon the Puritan settlers on the Nanse- 
mond river. Under fire of persecution two Puritan elders 
fled to Maryland in 164S. It was probably at their sug- 
gestion that Governor Stone issued an invitation to the 
entire Nansemoiid church to cross over into Maryland. 
Stone's liberal promises of local self-government and 
freedom in religion stimulated the Puritan exodus from 
Virginia, and caused the refugees to indulge the dream 
•of an independent colony in the new land of promise. 
At the outset they flatly refused to take the oath of alle- 
giance. They haggled at the words "absolute dominion." 
And demurred at the obedience due Ronian Catholic 
officers. For a year these refugees remained outside the 
pale of Baltimort^'s government, in the full determination 
to erect upon the shores of the Chesapeake a ''Ci vitas 
Dei" — a church state, to which they gave the reverential 
name of "Providence." In 1^551, they became again 
recalcitrant and refused to send delegates to the provincial 
assembly. They protested against the governor's hostile 



25 



advance upon the Indians of the Eastern Shore. Stone 
regarded the act as rebellions, and required them to take 
the first oath of fidelity, on penalty of forfeiture of lands. 
The Puritans protested against the oath as repugnant to 
their consciences as Christians and contrary to their rights 
as free subjects of England. They denounced the power 
of the Lord Proprietor, for, said they, he is liable to make 
null that done in the "Assemblies for the good of the 
people." On notice by Stone that writs and warrants 
should no longer run in the name of the Commonwealth, 
but in that of the Lord Proprietor, the Puritans prepared 
for war. The gained a bloodless victory and summoned 
a legislative assemblj'. One of its first acts was the 
disfranchisement of Catholics. The act, thouorh never 
rigidly enforced, has left an indelible stain upon their 
records. Both sides were now arming for a greater con- 
test. The drama of Marston Moor was to be re-enacted 
in the New World. Questions were mooting far wider 
than the sphere of religious controversy. The princi- 
ple of self-government and civil equality was at 
stake. The battle of the Severn was to determine 
whether the mediaeval institution of a feudal princi- 
pality should persist upon Maryland soil. The defeat 
of the royalists of St. Mary's was the vindication 
of the democratic principle in Maryland. Within a 
generation after the battle of the Severn, the Puritan 



26 



settlement as a political aggregate had become a memory. 
At the restoration of monarchy in England, the Puritan 
combined with the more numerous Episcopalians and his 
less extreme brethren of Charles County, and .completely 
lost his identity. Yet tlie last word of his movement 
has not yet been spoken. From the days of the Puritan 
challenge to the absolute authority of a feudal Lord, 
St. Mary's was doomed as the political centre of the 
Province. Just two hundred years ago the theatre of 
the Puritan struggle received the name of "Annapolis," 
and was formally advanced to the political headship of 
the Province. 

Three forms of relationships place us in communion 
with our fellows — the family, the State, property. Men 
have been slaves to all. To the family, as under the 
caste system of India; to the State, as under certain 
forms of the Spartan or Roman society; to property, as 
under the regime of tlie feudal middle ages. Christi- 
anity became the gateway of emancipation by teaching 
new lessons of the dignity and worth of man, and of his 
personal responsibility to God. Luther reiterated these 
half- forgotten truths. His was a reaction against the 
doctrine of corporate responsibility for opinion. The 
Protestant conception of individual responsibility .to God 
has naturally given birth to a multitude of creeds and 
churches; all generically Protestant, because all are intol- 



erant of the cardinal principle of tlie Iloman Court, 
namely, allegiance to its authority. Vet it remained for 
these champions of self-magistracy in matters of faith to 
learn the first lesson in the practice of religious toleration 
from the Catholic settlers of Maryland. 

Dr. Dexter in his History of Congregationalism, claims 
for Robert Browne, the leader of the ultra-Puritan 
Separatists, the proud distinction of being the first writer 
to state and defend, in the English tongue, the true and 
now accepted doctrine of the relation of the civil magis- 
trate to the church. The voice of Browne w^as as of one 
crying in the wilderness; there was no practical appli- 
cation of his theories among his Puritan brethren, either 
in Geneva or England or Massachusetts or Maryland. 
Geneva is said to have been at once the strength and 
weakness of the Puritan, "llis strength, because here 
he saw his ideal realized ; his weakness, because it taught 
him to try to get his reforms through the State." Calvin 
instituted at Geneva a Theocracy, the like of which the 
world has never seen. It was not a State church, bnt a 
church State. For self-control was substituted State 
control — a control that became inquisitorial, exacting, 
unjust. Laced in by catechismal formularies, the free 
circulation of new ideas was impeded. The Puritan 
was the last to see the injustice of purging away 
heresy by the shedding of blood, he was the last 



28 



to perceive the itmdequacy of force to crush a man's 
opinions, lie inclined a complacent ear to the dogma 
of exclusive salvation for those of his own sect — 
persecution followed as a corollary. In the years of 
Catholic toleration in Maryland, the question of religious 
toleration in Massachusetts was decided in the negative. 
Adverse opinions were exposed by the Synod of 1637, 
and in the white light of Puritan orthodoxy, and became 
heresies most foul. These Puritans had eaten of the 
bitter bread of persecution, they had sailed the seas and 
subdued the wilderness as victims of religious intolerance. 
When, however, they encountered a Quaker with wrong 
views — they proceeded to argue him into orthodoxy. 
Failing of this, they hung him. Intolerance and perse- 
cution do not stand upon the same plane. The one is 
rather a thing of necessity, consequent upon positiveness 
of opinion. The other is a thing of expediency. In our 
own day the power of the sword has happily departed 
from every form of religious opinion. This triumph is 
based on expediency rather than morality. Persecution 
does not neccessarily imply low ideals of conduct. The 
best Roman Emperors, as Trajan, Decius, Julian and 
Marcus Aurelitis, were precisely those who singled out the 
early Christians for persecution. The extremest bigots, 
as St. Dominic, Carlo Borromeo, Calvin and Caraffa, have 
been men of the purest intentions and of unimpeachable 



29 



morality. As doubt is the antecedent of new knowledge, 
so a spirit of intolerance is a necessary condition of prog- 
ress. Men will not labor and incur sacrifice to discover* 
the truth of subjects in respect to which they are perfectly 
content. John the Baptist, the uncouth proclaimer of a 
new dispensation, was intolerant — denouncing unsparingly 
thei regime of the Scribe and Pharisee. Isaiah, that other 
great reproacher and mouth piece of the desert, was intol- 
erant. Paul, the orthodox Jew of the polite world, with 
the inbreaking of the light becomes a "pestilent fellow 
and a mover of sedition." Only the person who holds 
that religious beliefs are essentially uncertain or essentially 
unimportant, can sweepingly condemn the religious intol- 
erance of earlier ages. Persecution has few apoloo-ists 
and deserves none. We utterly condemn the narrowness 
of the persecuting Puritan, while acknowledging that it 
was a high, but not too great a price to pay for his 
splendid legacy to the cause of civil liberty. It was the 
political intolerance of the Puritan which overthrew the 
tyranny of hereditary power in England and in Amei-ica. 
The Puritan who trod these walks boldly set about to 
redress the balance of the Old World — in the widenino- 
struggle for civil liberty. The spirit of the Puritan spoke 
again in the rejection of stamped paper. It flashed anew 
in the destruction of tea in yonder harbor. It echoed 



30 



once more in the ban put vpon the claims of great East- 
ern States to Western territory. 

The toleration which rests upon respect for adverse 
opinion, lives on in the true courtesy of our citizens. 
For the nobility of a landed aristocracy, has been sub- 
stituted among the sous of Maryland, the nobler title of 
the "grand old name of gentleman." The generation is 
now passing away which bore the griefs and devastations 
of a long and cruel war. In these years of peace, some 
have arisen who have never heard the call of grave 
political exigency ; some who have never known the sac- 
rifice for which a great public crisis pleads ; some who 
may never understand the priceless worth of the free 
institutions under which they live, unless with heart 
aflame, they read the cost of liberty in the devoted 
hearts, the noble purpose, the spent lives of the genera- 
tions that have gone before. Men sparing not them- 
selves in years of eminent public service — men struggling 
to heal the awful breach between brethren — men relin- 
quishing friends and fortune as the champions of an 
alien race — men placing their lives in pawn for their 
country's liberties. Such have been the sons of this 
Commonwealth, known in the councils of their State 
and nation. Honored of the world. Genius, nobleness, 
patriotism, have ever found a meeting place on this 
historic spot. The deeds of the men who have made us 



31 



what we are, but mock the feeble breatli of speech. 
Their work hves on, perpetuated by the strong men who 
even to-day gather within tliese historic walls. 

"Tho' much is taken, uuich abides; and tlio' 

We are not now that strength which in old days 

Moved earth and heaven ; that which we are, we are : 

One equal temper of heroic hearts. 

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will 

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." 



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